Times 2 - UK (2020-08-06)

(Antfer) #1

2 1GT Thursday August 6 2020 | the times


times


I


t was a shock, I think, for
everyone in their fifties to
hear this week that they
might be asked to shield and
stay home, although as it
turned out, the government
changed its mind, I don’t
know why. It probably had
something to do with keeping
Pret a Manger up and running. It
usually does. Or Pizza Express.
But it was a shock because you
trundle on and you trundle on
and birthdays come and go and
somehow you never really
register: gosh, I’m actually quite
old now. You get on with it.
There are signs. You may catch
your reflection and
recoil with: “I’m my
mother!” Sometimes,
when you’re climbing
the stairs, say, or
running for a bus,
it sounds as if
your buttocks are
clapping you. (My
buttocks are very
good at clapping me
and, frankly, I don’t
mind getting
some positive
encouragement
once in a while.)
You steer clear
of Topshop and
similar because you fear others
may assume you’re lost and need
redirecting to the Ecco shop or
Wallis. (I imagine the security
guards on their walkie-talkies:
“Woman in her fifties in knitwear!
Now approaching lingerie!
Redirect to Wallis! Redirect to
Ecco! Poor thing probably doesn’t
know the time of day!”)
But still, it doesn’t properly
register. I am as I ever was, is the
overriding feeling. I’m not old.
Not really. So when you hear that
anyone over 50 might have to
shield, it comes as a punch to the
solar plexus, which is still under
there, somewhere, maybe. Where
have all the years gone? How did

this happen? What about all the
stuff I’ve never done, like
becoming a goth? Or being “sexy”.
Is it too late now? OK, if it’s too
late to become “sexy” and then a
goth, could I kill two birds and
become a sexy goth? Could
I? (Please say. In particular, I
would like to hear from anybody
who has tried later-life sexy
gothness because I would be
most interested in how that
worked out.)
However, you do have to look
on the bright side, ultimately. And
there are reasons to be cheerful,
even if the government is telling
us we’re a bit finished. First,

though, we need to put to bed
what others usually say to make
themselves feel better about
ageing, such as “I know who
I am”, as if we suddenly stop
being works-in-progress, or “I
no longer compare myself with
others”, which is mad because
how would you know if you’re
successful otherwise?
But you do accumulate wisdom
that you can now pass on. That’s
true. I live with twentysomethings
and I’m always passing it on,
which is fortunate for them
because they’re completely
mistaken about almost
everything. So I’m constantly
going around saying, “No one

needs to wash clothes at a
temperature higher than 40
degrees,” or, “Crisps aren’t
breakfast,” or, “Don’t stick your
fingers in food like a feral animal.
I can see your prints in the
butter.” And so on.
I have to say, they’re not
especially grateful, so it can be
lonely when you’re right about
everything. But no one said that
being the only one around here
who knows how the world works
would be easy. Swings and
roundabouts and all that.
Other things to cheer up
fiftysomethings? Um. You can
attend aqua aerobics and feel
youthful because
you’re among the
youngest there.
And you can
search for a word
at breakfast and
not get it until
midnight, which
can be exciting.
(Most recently I
got “parquet” at
midnight and was
thrilled because I
would no longer
have to say: “That
wooden flooring,
comes in blocks,
laid at angles.. .”).
Oh, and here’s a good one.
You know those full-page
advertisements you see for
retirement villages? That show a
woman with grey, but abundant
and beautifully styled hair, staring
deep into the eyes of a fella also
with grey hair, but a luxurious
head of it, and they both have
super teeth and look as though
they’ve just had sex? And may
only be 42? Well, isn’t that
cheering? Knowing that’s you, in
just a few more years, which
means you’re not far off having
great hair and great teeth and
loads of sex while maybe being
only 42? And you know what? I
can’t wait. Bring it on.

Quincy


would love


my feet


all, not even when I tell
them what it will cost
in electricity if they
don’t turn the lights off
before they come up at
night. In fact, how do
they repay me? They
repay me by saying I
have “morgue feet”.
Morgue feet!
And I can’t deny it.
After I’ve been sitting
for a while they go all
cold and bluish-purple
like the feet you see
sticking out from under
blankets on mortuary
tables in TV thrillers,

and if it were Quincy,
ME, then Quincy would
be saying, “Murder,”
while the DA would be
saying, “Suicide,” and
then they would go to
Chinatown to thrash it
out over a bite. While
sitting adjacent on a
red velvet banquette.
(If you hate being an
over-50 ask yourself:
would I have had
Quincy, ME otherwise?)
I don’t know why my
feet get like this. Do
you? Perhaps if you’re
a later-life sexy goth

with “morgue feet”
and you understand
why they go that
blotchy purple-blue
you could write in?
Since that would be
three birds? All I
know is that they
return to a more
normal, less morgue-y
pinkish-white as soon
as I get moving again
across our floor, which,
downstairs, is that
wood that comes in
blocks and is set at
angles... Damn, damn,
damn. Gone again.

So, day after day I pass
on all this accumulated
wisdom to the nieces
that live with me —
“That rubbish isn’t
going to take itself out
to the bin” — and they
really aren’t grateful.
Sometimes I even think
they’re not listening at

Deborah Ross


Reasons to be cheerful


in my fifties? I feel


young in aqua aerobics


Who’s afraid of


Teenagers can’t get enough of the


Chinese app — now it’s the subject of


controversy in the US and UK. What’s


the big deal? By Chris Stokel-Walker


B


ad news: if you
somehow managed
to escape being roped
into a choreographed
family dance by your
grandchildren when
they visited for
Christmas and have
spent lockdown studiously ignoring
TikTok, your time is up. The world’s
most powerful man, Donald Trump,
has made it the focus of the 2020 US
presidential election.
Confronted by a Chinese app
dominating the world, and worried
about potential national security
issues that could stem from that,
Trump and his administration
officials, including Mike Pompeo,
the US secretary of state, have
threatened to ban it. Trump later
cooled his demands, saying that
he would accept a sale to the US
technology company Microsoft.
However, the step back from the brink
came with a caveat: the deal must be
done by September 15, Trump says,
“at which point it’s going to be out
of business in the United States”.
Trump has taken against TikTok,
so of course there is wall-to-wall
coverage of the app wherever you
look. What’s the big fuss about it?
Is a Chinese spy watching you fail at
dancing to the latest pop song? And
how does it work, anyway?

1 What is it?


It’s the latest tech sensation, with
800 million people worldwide using
the app every month — and growing
fast. Users post videos between 15 and
60 seconds long that can be seen by
anyone in the world. It is huge in the
UK, with 27 per cent of 18 to 24-year-
olds using the app, according to
YouGov; this figure has risen from
7 per cent at the start of the pandemic.
“Creators make videos of all sorts,
including dancing, singing, art, sport
and comedy, and it’s been branded
the place for self-expression,” says
Vicky Banham, 22, a TikTok manager
at the digital media company Jungle
Creations and a tiktoker herself, with
1.3 million followers.

2 Why is it controversial?


For the best part of three decades
social media apps we have used —
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and
Snapchat — have been based in a
small pocket of land on the west coast
of America: Silicon Valley. TikTok is
not. Its parent company, Byte Dance,
is based in Beijing.
Its location has proven to be a
political hot potato, sweeping up
TikTok in a broader spat between
the West and China over its tech
advancements, including the
banning of Huawei from US
and UK 5G networks.
Trump has attempted to make the
threat of China an election issue,
spending tens of thousands of dollars

on Facebook and Instagram adverts
reaching millions of voters. Their
message is clear: “TikTok is spying
on you.” Republican politicians, as well
as Conservative MPs including Iain
Duncan Smith, have called it a threat
to national security, fearing that the
data we give it is being fed directly to
the Chinese Communist Party. The
former Tory leader told The Times:
“Byte Dance is every bit as unreliable
as Huawei.”

3 Is it a threat?


TikTok denies that any data goes to
China, and cybersecurity researchers
who have analysed the app’s code
agree. “The servers for US users are
already outside China, in Singapore
and the US, so one has to assume that
any security concern relates to the
ultimate ownership of TikTok,” says
Alan Woodward, a professor of
cybersecurity at the University of
Surrey. He added that the fact that
TikTok might be subject to the
National Intelligence Law, introduced
in 2016, raised questions. It allows the
Chinese state to access data held by
any Chinese-based company on a
whim. However, TikTok says that it
has never received any requests from
the Chinese state, and would not
accede to them if it did; besides which,
non-Chinese users’ data is not held in
China, so it wouldn’t be accessible.
Other researchers, including
Robert Baptiste, a French
cybersecurity expert, have analysed
the app’s code and found that it acts
no differently from several other apps
we use daily to book flights, post
photos, find directions and watch
videos. Critics of TikTok point to a
post on Reddit, a discussion forum,
whose creator could not provide the
documentary evidence to support
his claims, and a lawsuit filed by a
Californian student in December that
has not yet been litigated.

4 What information
do we give it?

The same we give to Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and others. It
monitors everything you type in the
app, details of your phone, including
what model it is, what time zone
you’re in and what mobile provider
you use, as well as your phone’s
contacts (provided that you give it
permission). It also uses the data it
has about how you interact with
videos on the app to show you more
of what you like.
All those things sound worrying, but
they are exactly the same bits of data
we disclose about ourselves when we
use the big western social networks
and apps. We have begun to recognise
that in general this is a problem, but
we appear to have misdiagnosed the
cause: it’s not the fault of TikTok, but
a broader issue with the technology
industry. “Generation Overshare are
quite happy to give away their data in

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